


Not Us

by xxx_cat_xxx



Series: Whumping Tony Stark [14]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Coughing, Dead Peter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Pneumonia, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sad, Sick Character, Sick Tony, Sick Tony Stark, Sickfic, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, tony misses peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 10:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17917154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxx_cat_xxx/pseuds/xxx_cat_xxx
Summary: Steve remembered the way his heart had been pounding in his throat when the spaceship first landed in front of the compound. How they’d all run outside and then stopped as if on command, torn between hope and dread at what awaited them.---Inspired by the latest Endgame trailer.





	Not Us

**Author's Note:**

> I know that I can’t do justice to the whole Tony-Steve relationship mess with one 1.7k-word fic. I’m not even trying. Imagine this as part of a larger project that may or may not ever be written. Let’s pretend for this one that Pepper and Rhodey died in the snap or are otherwise indisposed. 
> 
> A million thanks to [whumphoarder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whumphoarder/pseuds/whumphoarder) for beta-reading.

Steve remembered the way his heart had been pounding in his throat when the spaceship first landed in front of the compound. How they’d all run outside and then stopped as if on command, torn between hope and dread at what awaited them.

What they’d seen when the ship finally opened its gates was somewhere in between the best and worst case scenarios. Tony was alive, albeit barely, dragging himself down the ramp with the help of a robot girl, his eyes looking through all of them as if they were just another group of ghosts that haunted him.

He’d spent a few days in the medical unit, just enough to get out of the danger zone that dehydration and malnutrition had brought on. He and Scott Lang had started to work on a plan the moment he was strong enough to hold a tablet. He’d gotten down to the workshop as soon as he could walk again, silently daring anyone to try and stop him. He still looked ill, desperately thin under the clothes that were so oversized they seemed to belong to someone else, and heavily favoured his left side while walking, aching from the remainders of an injury he wouldn’t allow anyone to tend to.

_Some people move one. But not him._

Steve would never know the details of what had happened on Titan, having to make do with the bits and pieces Bruce and the others slipped him, although he was sure even they would never get to hear the full story. There had been a boy with Tony, they said, a child that Steve remembered blurrily from the battle in Leipzig as extraordinarily strong and a bit too talkative, a child that hadn’t returned to earth. But whatever had happened, it was clear that it had shaken Tony to his core, changed him to someone Steve hadn’t thought he possibly could become.

The early mornings at the compound had always been Steve’s alone to jog and quietly read the news upon return, to watch the sunrise without another soul around. But nobody could sleep nowadays.

Sometimes he’d meet Bruce in the kitchen, making tea with the calm, habitual movements of an old man, but the circles under his eyes would betray another sleepless night. Natasha was often found in the common room, silently staring out the window, as if looking out for someone who would never return. Sometimes Steve sat with her, the shared silence as comforting as anything could be these days. Sometimes it was too much to bear, and one of them would leave after minutes without speaking a word.

_Some people move one. But not them._

One time at dawn he’d found Tony on the couch, thrashing and turning in the grip of a nightmare, an overturned scotch bottle on the ground speaking of how he’d tried to drown his thoughts the night before. Steve hadn’t dared to wake him, had stood silently, and, when the moans had become too frantic, had turned on his heels and called Bruce to intervene.

Tony was of course not the only one suffering from nightmares. Steve had never slept as badly as he did these days. Sometimes the dead came back to life. Then Bucky stood next to him, both of his arms made from flesh and blood, a smile that hadn’t been seen in decades hanging on his lips when he looked at Steve. Sometimes Sam was there too, circling high above them like the falcon that gave him his name. These were the nights when Steve would wake up with tears on his cheeks, when he would give anything to stay in that world the dreams opened up for him.

More often though, it was the living who’d step over into the world of the dead, the few souls that still meant something to him taken away at last. Natasha’s hair was always red when she died, nearly the same colour as the blood spreading rapidly beneath her body once it hit the ground. Sometimes Steve was the one who couldn’t save her. Sometimes he was the one who pulled the trigger.

They all were broken beyond repair, but the change was most obvious in Tony. The man’s unlimited energy was still there, but now it was of a dark, destructive nature that seemed to entail despair. The sparkling of creativity that had brought so many inventions to life had transformed into a mad, raging fire that everyone knew would leave him burned out and hollow at the end. He wouldn’t sleep, hardly ate a thing, and talked much less than he used to. His jokes, as rare as they were now, had gone from good-natured irony to stinging cynicism.

Even in the worst periods, Tony Stark had been a man who enjoyed life, who wanted to survive just for the sake of living. Now it was different - Steve felt that all that kept the man going was the determination to bring back the ones they’d lost, that the moment this would happen, he’d crumble to earth without anything left to force him into getting up again.

Two weeks after the landing, Tony started coughing - a cracking kind of noise that sounded painful and dry. Bruce tried to talk him into getting checked out by the only doctor left at the compound, fearing he might have caught pneumonia after the long period of isolation in space. But Tony refused with the same stubbornness he’d refuse to eat and rest, ignoring the way the cough slowly turned into a wet rattling deep in his chest.

The worry creased in Bruce’s face became permanent, nothing left of the gleaming hope that had sparked in all of them when the spaceship had first shown up on their radar. It was only reluctantly that he left with Nat when the first message of Clint’s whereabouts reached them. Tony, looking sweaty and flushed, essentially forced them out of the door. The moment they were gone, he vanished back into the workshop without another look at Steve.

Steve was in the gym the next night, trying to chase away depression with the pain that would only come from hours of working out, when Scott entered without knocking.

“You need to get downstairs,” he stated without a greeting, “I think Stark’s having a panic attack.”

“What?” Steve frowned, caught off-guard, “I don’t think I’m the right person to -”

“No one else is here, unless you count that robotic girl who’s currently taking apart her own leg in the swimming pool. Look, I don’t care what happened between the two of you. I’m here to bring back my family, not to deal with Tony Stark’s PTSD. You’ve got much more experience with this kind of stuff, and you’ve known him far longer.”

So Steve had gone.

The lab still smelled like it used to, but it seemed larger and darker without robots whirring around and with a distinct lack of rock music blaring from the speakers.

Tony was pressed into the small gap between a cupboard and a workbench, trembling and drawing in small, flat breaths in quick succession. He was staring into space with wide open eyes, their darkness in stark contrast to his otherwise ghostly white face. It was clear from a mile away that he was running a fever, the glassy eyes and beads of sweat above his brows betraying the illness even before Steve could feel the heat coming off him in waves.

“Tony?” he asked in a forcibly calm voice while kneeling down a few steps away, knowing better than to touch him.

There was no reply except a sucked-in breath that made Tony’s lungs rattle. The distressed look on his face morphed into outright panic when the air didn’t reach its intended destination. His frail hands clutched at his chest in a useless attempt to force oxygen inside.

“Tony. It’s okay, you’re safe. We’re at the compound, in New York, remember?”

Tony sucked in another mouthful of air, setting off a coughing fit that had him doubling over in pain. His head hit the workbench in the process, and maybe that was what made him snap out of it. When he looked up, there was a bit of recognition in his eyes.

“What-What the fuck are you doing here?” he croaked.

“You’re sick, Tony. You need to-”

“You’ve got no idea what I need, Rogers. And no right to tell me what to do.“

“You’re angry. Fine, I understand. But Tony, you haven’t talked to me-”

He was cut off by Tony descending into another coughing fit that had his whole body shaking. He wheezed and retched, hacking up strings of red-tinged phlegm that stained the collar of his shirt.

Steve put a hand on his back, reflexively trying to ease him.

“Get off me,” Tony gasped, his voice full of spite, but when Steve looked at him, his face conveyed pure terror. It was the same look he’d had in Siberia, when Steve had smashed the arc reactor instead of his head, ending the fight. Ending everything else that had ever been there in between them.

“Okay.” Steve backed off. Tony was taking rattling breaths, his eyes half-shut, looking like he was having a hard time staying conscious.

“I’m… I should leave, I think. I’ll ask Scott to help you to your room,” Steve said quietly.

But he didn’t move, the clouds of unspoken words hanging heavily in the air, paralyzing him.

In the end, it was Tony who broke the silence.

“Why us, Steve?” he slurred deliriously. “Why did we survive, while the ones who deserved to live had to go?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replied, all the sadness of the world caught in his voice. “I always thought that there was justice in what was happening in the world, a deeper sense to why we’re here. But now I think it’s all just madness.”

“What will we do?” Tony asked, desperately. “What will we do if we can’t get them back?”

“We have to.” There was only one reply Steve could give, the only one he’d ever had.

_Some people move one. But not us._

Steve leaned forward, laid a hand on the other man’s bony shoulder, feeling the heat pulsating through his shirt. Tony looked up at him, sick and defeated and lost, frantically searching for something that would be worth staying alive for. This time, he didn’t push Steve away.


End file.
